People of various religions have always tried to find the truth about forces leading homo sapiens through anger, joy, bias, sympathy, jealousy, and support. Many believe in God as a representative of good, divine, and pure. Evil is classically countering God, plays tricks on human souls, drags them to darkness, temptation, and sin. This perception follows people from childhood when the meanings of good and bad are formed whilst reading fairy tales and discussing with parents social norms and favorite characters. However, a grown-up adult learns and broadcasts the borders of his mind, and the basement of good and bad breaks and rebuilds forming a human inner world in a different unique way. This assignment argues that there are multiple opinions on evil as humans are not able to comprehend God’s actions.
One of the authors, Mackie, actively tries to explain the purpose of an evil presence and tries to find solutions to the issue of evil existence. Mackie sees the problem in people’s belief in God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence (Mackie, 1955). One of the decisions of the evil issue proposed by Mackie is perceiving evil as the counterpart to good. I believe the balance between the forces exists, but God does not want evil to dominate humans, he truly wants good to win. However, God also understands that human nature cannot exist only in good as then, without comparison, they will start forgetting what good means and how it feels.
With the current nature of a human, evil is an inevitable part of the human soul, and full domination of neither of the forces could be real. Mackie also stated that “evil is necessary as a means to good” (Mackie, 1955). I disagree with such an explanation of the path leading to good because the nature of human’s wish to create, be close to God, love, to have a clear mind can take origins from his belief. A person can make a mistake, make a sin, and afterward learn, gain experience, and eventually stand on God’s side.
According to another solution, Mackie stated that the universe is better with some evil than without it (Mackie, 1955). It is hard to agree that evil makes the world better but evil, with the confrontation to good, allows people to compare and make conclusions, feel the borders of two powers. Sometimes, one evil action can be done to escape another leading to worse consequences. Maybe then, a person making a choice hopes that they made the world better by scarifying less than they could. Another expression of Mackie is that evil occurs due to human’s free will, and the latter is responsible for it, not God (Mackie, 1955). People are indeed free to make choices, and evil happens because of their thoughts, decisions, and experience. However, God is responsible for all the individuals, he guides them to the good side, cares about people, and is ready to forgive. People consist of both good and bad, God and evil, and their choices lead them through life experiences, self-development, and constant thinking.
Van Inwagen does not try to find the reasons why God allows evil but proposes humans to see God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence through the free-will defense (Van Inwagen, 2004). With the help of free will, people were supposed to be closer to God, have powers to protect themselves, but the evil forces interfered and led people away from God. This separation, however, gives hope to humans to reunite with God through suffering and pain (Van Inwagen, 2004). This position is very close to my perceptions of the problem as it underlines the possibility of human souls walking a path full of obstacles and sorrows to understand where they truly belong.
The experience gained at the end of the route teaches a human about their sins, mistakes, evil emotions, and feelings. If with all new information the human does not want to be on evil’s side, then they reunite with God. I believe life is about these steps, constant walking to understand oneself and understand God, become close to Him, and eventually unite with God as a whole. If the human does not taste evil, never makes a sin, then there will be nothing to compare good with.
B. C. Johnson proposes an alternative opinion on the problem of evil. The author states that some evil actions refer to God, as He allows evil and creates it for some purposes (Johnson, 1981). The patience with which God looks on the evil and stays actionless might lead some people to frustration, disappointment, and atheism. I know that it is not in human power to judge God and His actions, and most of the times people do not know why evil is happening, and God does nothing to prevent it. I perceive the wish to judge God or other people as a sin because, if a person makes judgments, they thinks they are superior to others. If a person is superior, then he has more experience, wisdom, and knowledge than God and other people, which cannot be true.
The issue of evil is complicated, and there will never be a singular opinion on it. People might go through suffering and pain to gain essential knowledge to become closer to God. Humans will always strive to understand why God does not fight evil or why God lets evil occur. Still, it is not in the power of humans to see the whole picture of God’s actions as sometimes no action toward evil saves the souls of many other lives.
References
Johnson, B. C. (1981). God and the problem of evil. NY: Prometheus Books.
Mackie, J. L. (1955). Evil and omnipotence. Mind, 64(254), 118-126.
Van Inwagen, P. (2004). Christian faith and the problem of evil. Eerdmans Publishing Company.